It looks great. The spooky Cave of Voldemort. A misty, empty quidditch field. A tortured Malfoy who, it is turning out, seems actually to be able to act. And especially creepy is a glimpse of the cursing of Katie Bell in …

Three things that have been on mind, as I sit here trying to decide if I am sick enough to not go into work.

One:this magisterial history of Matter-Eater Lad, who has to be on anybody’s list of the worst-named superheroes of all time, but who manages to salvage a strange alien dignity despite his lame power. I like the part where he …

I’m not proud of this, but I am somewhat of an afficianado of parodies of Billy Joel’s paean to Baby Boomer self-obsession, “We Didn’t Start The Fire.” At one point, I forced the other writers at work to help me write a Simpsons version of the song, called “They’ll Never Stop The Simpsons.” This tribute, although eerily true in its …

I kind of … want this. It looks like Total Recall meets Eternal Sunshine. I’m trying not to think about the fact that the director, one Duncan Jones, is apparently David Bowie’s son. If you look on YouTube you can find a set of five clips from the movie, but I’m not linking to them …

I cook a lot. I didn’t used to. My father lives on Saltines, and my mother is English, so all in all we weren’t a big food house. Plus I thought of cooking as something cool people did. Cool is not really my department. Nerds are supposed to live on vending machine food. Which I did for a long time.